Adam Baker - Impact

Frost knelt, knitted her fingers through the grate and lifted it aside.

The hatch had been ripped away during the crash. They looked down on sand.

The scratching sound abruptly ceased.

‘Could it be snakes?’ murmured Hancock. ‘Scorpions? Some kind of burrowing thing?’

She shook her head.

‘Middle of the desert. No bugs, no brush, no nothing.’

‘The sound. It was a living thing. Something moving with purpose, deliberation.’

‘I think you might be right.’

Frost reached down like she intended to dig sand. She hesitated, fingertips an inch from the surface, then slowly withdrew her hand.

Hancock tied a fresh length of chute bandage round his stitched scalp and eye socket. He clenched teeth as he knotted and pulled tight. He sweated with pain. His skin steamed in the night air.

He sat cross-legged with his eye closed, locked his face in a mask of calm. He rode out head-pounding discomfort, let it peak and dull.

‘Thought the wound was numb,’ said Frost.

‘That was before you got to work with a needle and thread.’

He relaxed and opened his eye as pain began to abate.

Frost sat with her back to the bulkhead. She pointed to the grate covering the ventral hatch.

‘Maybe we should stack a few boxes,’ she said. ‘Don’t know what the hell is down there, but I’d feel better knowing it can’t get in.’

‘Let’s not freak out,’ said Hancock. ‘We’ve got more than enough bullets to greet anything that might come knocking.’

Frost bit the cap from a morphine auto-injector and punched the needle into her thigh. She waited for the opiate to hit.

‘Okay, Cap,’ she gestured to her injured leg. ‘Your turn to help me out.’

‘What do you need?’

‘Release the splint. Let my leg breathe a while. Check my foot isn’t about to rot off.’

Hancock knelt beside her. He released splint straps. She winced.

Her calf bruised black.

‘Looks all right,’ said Hancock. ‘Messed up, but not gangrenous.’ He examined her foot, checked it for warmth. ‘You’ve still got circulation. Guess your leg will be all right, given time. Want me to strap it up?’

She shook her head.

‘Give me a minute or two. Got to psych myself. Bound to hurt like a motherfucker.’

Frost stepped outside and leant against the fuselage.

The moonlit crash site surrounded by a high ridge of dunes.

She bent and massaged her strapped leg. She studied shadows, did it sly, glanced around without moving her head. Half expected to see a solitary figure watching from the darkness.

She straightened up. She stopped her hand as it strayed towards her shoulder holster.

‘Everything okay?’ called Noble.

He lay on his back looking up at the stars.

Frost nodded, non-committal.

Sunstroke. Early driven out of his mind by thirst and unrelenting light. Only thing that could account for his behaviour. He no longer recognised fellow crewmen, saw them as threatening strangers. In which case he would soon die in a wretched delirium, like a rabid dog. Succumb slow and nasty. Stumble through the dunes ranting and raging. Too dangerous to approach, too far gone to accept help. Nothing they could do but let him prowl the wreckage-strewn perimeter, screaming at the sky, until he fell dead in the sand.

Lieutenant Nicholas Early.

A serious-minded kid, with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Had a young wife somewhere. A likeable guy. Sad to think of him lobotomised by the cruel sunlight.

Hancock crossed the sand towards the signal fire. He swayed. He stumbled. He kept his eyes fixed on the flames to help him walk straight.

He popped the restraining strap of his shoulder holster and kept a hand on his pistol butt. Couldn’t aim worth a damn. One eye, no balance. But at close range it wouldn’t matter. Lieutenant Early might have been driven mad by the sun, degenerated to a raging berserker so demented he couldn’t feel pain or injury, but a couple of 9mm hollow points centre-of-mass would put him down for good.

Hancock dropped to his knees next to the satcom.

Battery at seventy-three per cent.

The screen still hung at Acquisition.

He cancelled and selected preset Alpha.

Comsec sign-in:

He keyed:

He hit Enter.

He keyed:

The screen cleared. Winking cursor.

He glanced around at dunes lit by weak flame light, checked for any sign Early was watching from the shadows.

Nothing but darkness.

He wondered what the deranged airman might be doing at that moment. Stumbling among the dunes. Or sitting in the moonlight, rocking back and forth, head full of phantasmagoric torment. Or lying dead in the sand.

Hancock turned back to the screen and typed. Same message he’d typed a dozen times:

He hit Send. Then he shut down the terminal, folded the antenna, and began to drag the case back towards the plane.

Hancock hefted the trunk onto his shoulder and heaved it up the ladderway, onto the flight deck.

He climbed the ladder and sat on the trunk a while to catch his breath.

He lifted a blast screen. A glance out the flight-deck windows. The signal fire.

Strange sight:

Two figures lit by weak flame light.

He hurriedly leaned across the pilot seat, tried to wipe dust from the windows with the sleeve of his flight suit for a clearer view.

The figures were gone.

‘Noble?’ he shouted. ‘You still down there?’

Noble, from the lower cabin:

‘Yeah.’

‘Were you outside just now?’

‘Been right here.’

Hancock wondered how much he could trust his own vision. One eye. No depth perception.

‘Stay sharp down there, you hear? Don’t nod out on me.’

He flipped latches and threw open the lid of the trunk.

The antenna packed in foam. He lifted it free. Tripod extended. Segmented aluminium petals fanned into a dish.

He stood on the trunk, reached up to the roof and tore back the insulation blanket masking the gunner’s vacant ejection hatch. He pushed the antenna out onto the roof and adjusted alignment.

The terminal. Coaxial cable jacked into a side-socket.

Boot up. Scrolling BIOS. Flickering loading bars.

Comsec sign-in:

He keyed:

He hit Enter.

He keyed:

He hit Enter.

The ticking clock glyph of signal acquisition.

Clatter of boots on ladder rungs.

Noble climbed up onto the flight deck. He stood beside Hancock and looked at the screen, the endless sweep of the clock.

‘Nothing left, is there? Nothing coherent. The Joint Chiefs are probably down a bunker someplace. Maps. Time-zone clocks. Yelling into their war-phones, issuing orders to units that no longer exist.’